smallspy said:
Because of the need to shoehorn the alignment between all of the 409 offramps and the people-mover, the line is a lot more curvy - both laterally and vertically - than it could have been otherwise. The maximum speed on the alignment is 40mph, but much of it has lower speed restrictions due to curve radius and the crossovers.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
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i wonder if the curve was on a slight bank would the turning speeds be allowed to be a bit higher
 
Reecemartin said:
Seeing Tex RailI think I would have much prefered their vehicles: http://www.texrail.com/status/project-updates/
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I don't understand why UP Express has a cab in its middle car. It looks ridiculous when run in a 2 car set, and wastes space in the 3 car set. They should have has a middle car with no cab, and run them A-A, or A-B-A, but never A-B. Just order fewer Bs, and get cheaper Bs with more passenger space as a result of not having a cab in them.

The engine is a little bit of a joke in these cars too, more like a bus engine with all the gears, but I guess that goes away with electrification.
 
EnviroTO said:
I don't understand why UP Express has a cab in its middle car. It looks ridiculous when run in a 2 car set, and wastes space in the 3 car set. They should have has a middle car with no cab, and run them A-A, or A-B-A, but never A-B. Just order fewer Bs, and get cheaper Bs with more passenger space as a result of not having a cab in them.

The engine is a little bit of a joke in these cars too, more like a bus engine with all the gears, but I guess that goes away with electrification.
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Problem there is that if you're down an A for maintenance, you're down a trainset if you can't run AB. That doesn't work.
 
EnviroTO said:
The engine is a little bit of a joke in these cars too, more like a bus engine with all the gears, but I guess that goes away with electrification.
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I have ridden some much rougher and noisier DMU's over the pond. The Sharyo's are maybe not the best but not the worst either. Not bad enough to be objectionable IMHO.

- Paul
 
I don't see the point of buying new DMUs when the line is going to be electrified in the next few years.

As for the 3% rise in GO ridership over the last year, that is nothing to be proud of and should be ringing alarm bells at Metrolinx. The GTA grew by 2% last year alone and when you consider the huge increase in off-peak/weekend service, they results are pretty bad. This backs up what I have been saying for years.............all the service and frequency improvements mean little if people can't afford to ride them in the first place.

Wynne's announcement of a TTC/GO subsidy of $1.50 per trip will help and now we will start to see real ridership increases but it's just a start. It will prove that there is massive latent demand for GO/RER services but it's the prices that are holding riders back. Funny how a small $18 million per year to increase ridership will do as much as billions in infrastructure that people can't afford to take.
 
ssiguy2 said:
As for the 3% rise in GO ridership over the last year, that is nothing to be proud of and should be ringing alarm bells at Metrolinx.
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I have been noticing that the Union revitalization has been a quite a noticeable bottleneck. The number of Lakeshore West GO trains from 4:45 to 5:45pm dropped by about 2 trains (8 trains down to 6 trains) as they struggle to juggle the schedule in the light of platform closures and Union bottlenecks.

I think GO service ridership increases should be much more noticeable, once the revitalization finally goes through its home stretch in ~2019 (ish).

Then the USRC work is going to pinch things a bit....

Then electrification work and RER signalling upgrades (some variant of PTC/CBTC/etc).

The growth needs to accelerate but probably not easily in the next one to two years.
 
crs1026 said:
I have ridden some much rougher and noisier DMU's over the pond. The Sharyo's are maybe not the best but not the worst either. Not bad enough to be objectionable IMHO.

- Paul
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It's the most used DMU engine in the world. It is true that the prime mover and gearbox are both derived from truck/bus origins though.
Wherever there's advanced rail technology, you'll find Cummins power. Under the floor on Europe's high-speed passenger trains. On 20-ton grinders in the Far East. Cummins is on track with the most progressive rail companies in the world, including Bombardier and Siemens.

We offer a full line of ratings, with many engine models specifically modified for railway equipment.

Cummins railcar engines, for instance, utilize low-profile designs for use under the car floor, with access to service points from underneath the engine, not inside the passenger compartment. The 750-hp QSK19 is the newest of our "horizontal" engines, and has the capacity to drive a new generation of high-speed DMUs, with projected speeds of up to 210 km/hr.
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https://cumminsengines.com/rail
 
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This may have been noted or discussed here already so apologies if this is duplication. I hadn't realized that all of the engines on the SMART trainsets had to be replaced. Given it was the same order as the UPX trainsets why did they have to do this for the SMART trainsets and not UPX? Article here.

Sonoma-Marin-Area Rail Transit launched its commuter train service between Sonoma County and Marin County at the beginning of September after months of delays caused by technical problems, including engine replacement on all 14 of the train’s cars. In the first weekend of paid operations, about 2,000 daily passengers rode the train, surpassing SMART’s initial projections of 300 daily riders on weekends.
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Allandale25 said:
This may have been noted or discussed here already so apologies if this is duplication. I hadn't realized that all of the engines on the SMART trainsets had to be replaced. Given it was the same order as the UPX trainsets why did they have to do this for the SMART trainsets and not UPX? Article here.
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See here.

Short answer - UPE was already in operation when the problems were identified. SMART had the luxury of delaying startup until their units were fixed, but the same approach would have meant shutting down UPE - imagine the fun our local media would have had with that.
My understanding is that the UP units have had the fix applied, but unit by unit without cancelling service.

- Paul
 
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